In the United States, consumer ISPs have been handing over the identities of suspected BitTorrent pirates for years, mostly because a court has compelled them to as part of a copyright infringement lawsuit. It’s not particularly difficult for rightsholders to take this route, but it can be expensive.

In the early 2000s, the RIAA hoped to cut costs by obtaining the details of Verizon customers via the DMCA subpoena process. That ultimately failed in 2005 when a court found that subpoenas under section 512(h) only apply to ISPs that directly store, cache, or provide links to infringing material.

That decision settled the waters for years but didn’t prevent BMG and anti-piracy partner Rightscorp from trying to identify 30,000 subscribers of ISP CBeyond in 2014. A year later, a court sided with the ISP and rejected calls for a more progressive reading of the law.

“It is the province of Congress, not the courts, to decide whether to rewrite the DMCA in order to make it fit a new and unforeseen internet architecture and accommodate fully the varied permutations of competing interests that are inevitably implicated by such new technology,” the judge wrote .

Congress Not Needed

Even though Congress still hasn’t rewritten the DMCA, movie studios known for tracking down alleged BitTorrent pirates in pursuit of cash settlements are increasingly using the DMCA subpoena system anyway. During 2022 and early 2023, Voltage Pictures, Millenium Funding, LHF Productions, and Capstone Studios obtained DMCA subpoenas targeting customers of CenturyLink (now Lumen).

The first request of 2022 targeted ‘just’ 13 subscribers , the next sought to unmask 63 .

Last month a court clerk’s signature approved the pursuit of another 150 CenturyLink customers and soon after another ISP’s subscribers would begin feeling the heat.

Billion Dollar Headache

Like competitor CenturyLink, Cox Communications declined to take part in the ‘ Six Strikes ‘ anti-piracy initiative in the United States back in 2013. Eventually a more traditional piracy reduction method would resurface.

In 2019, the major recording labels of the RIAA successfully argued that Cox could be held liable for copyright infringements carried out by its customers. A Virginia federal jury found the ISP contributorily and vicariously liable and awarded the labels $1 billion in damages .

One billion dollars is a huge amount but Cox was also concerned about other things ; being forced to disconnect subscribers “based on a few isolated and potentially inaccurate allegations” and concerns that the interests of rightsholders were being elevated above those of “ordinary, and often blameless, people who depend on the internet.”

To this background of liability for subscribers’ infringements, while defending the public against potentially baseless claims, Cox Communications now finds itself in the middle of another piracy dilemma.

Another Controversial DMCA Subpoena

The same movie studios that have been targeting CenturyLink subscribers for more than a year have decided that Cox subscribers should receive similar treatment.

Last month, Voltage Holdings, Millennium Funding, and Capstone Studios, filed an application for a DMCA subpoena to compel Cox Communications and CoxCom LLC to hand over the details of allegedly infringing customers.

Court documents list 41 IP addresses (four of which are duplcates) alleging that corresponding subscribers can be found in Virginia, Louisiana, Nevada, Arizona, Rhode Island, Oklahoma, California, Connecticut and Kansas. The majority stand accused of downloading and/or sharing the 2022 movie, ‘Fall.’

Most of the alleged pirates are linked with copies of the movie labeled [YTS.MX], a reference to YTS, the most popular torrent site on the planet . Millenium Media was one of the companies behind a lawsuit and subsequent $1m settlement with YTS back in 2020, which didn’t require the site to shut down.

Sign on the Line

Filed in a Hawaii district court, the application for DMCA subpoena follows a now-familiar format. The application notes that since all required paperwork is in order, it’s the clerk’s responsibility alone to act as the law requires.

“512(h)(4) provides that the Clerk, not a Judge should issue and sign the proposed subpoena,” it reads.

In common with the subpoenas against CenturyLink, the Cox application describes in detail how courts have ruled that DMCA subpoenas don’t apply to conduit ISPs. However, the application says that given developments in recent years (specifically, a lawsuit BMG filed against Cox itself ), there’s a belief that the Tenth Circuit will eventually find that 512(h) does apply to conduit ISPs after all.

“For these reasons, the undersigned request that the Clerk of the Court expeditiously issue and sign the proposed subpoena and return it to the undersigned…to be served on the service provider,” it concludes.

The DMCA subpoena application was signed by the clerk the very same day so, in all likelihood, Cox has already been served. Cox hasn’t filed a motion to quash as far as we know, which may suggest it intends to recognize the validity of the subpoena by handing over its subscribers’ details to the movie studios.

512(h) is Ambiguous, Concentrate on the Clerk

In a 2021 submission to the Copyright Office on the CASE Act, the powerful Copyright Alliance noted a submission by Verizon which called for the Office to “create guidance for its Claims Attorneys that any Section 512 (h) subpoenas directed to a Section 512 (a) mere conduit service provider must be issued by a federal judge and not by a clerk of a court.”

Describing the issue as “highly contested” and 512(h) itself as “ambiguous” according to the Copyright Office, the Copyright Alliance pointed out that it isn’t the Copyright Claims Board’s job to get involved.

“In any event, it is the clerk of a federal district court – not the CCB – who will determine whether to issue a subpoena under Section 512(h),” the Alliance advised.

Presumably this is exactly what Congress intended, or maybe not. Either way, ISPs with repeat infringer lawsuits pending seem unlikely to rock the boat in a rush to find out.

ISPs on firmer footing probably won’t find themselves targeted in future applications but that won’t stop them being filed, most likely in increasing numbers.

The DMCA subpoena application and IP list can be found here ( 1 , 2 , pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

After reporting on all things BitTorrent-related for the 13 years leading up to May 2018, TorrentFreak spotted something out of the ordinary .

BitTorrent Inc., the company founded by BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen, and the owner of uTorrent, the world’s most recognized torrent client, suddenly had a new name. When asked about the change, Rainberry Inc. said it was a “corporate decision” not unlike the Alphabet/Google exercise.

Less than two weeks later, we were able to reveal that TRON founder Justin Sun was planning to buy BitTorrent Inc. Less than a month after that, Sun closed the deal with a reported offer of $140 million .

A shareholder quoted in a TechCrunch report revealed that one of Sun’s aims was to use the BitTorrent acquisition to “legitimize” TRON’s business.

According to a Securities and Exchange Commission announcement published a few hours ago, the plan failed in at least one key area. Most likely, many, many more.

Fraud: SEC Charges Justin Sun and Three Wholly-Owned Companies

Claims that the SEC had already opened an investigation into Sun’s business activities have been around for a long time. An extraordinary article written by Christopher Harland-Dunaway and published by The Verge last year left very little doubt.

In an announcement Wednesday, the SEC revealed charges against Justin Sun and three of his wholly-owned companies – Tron Foundation Limited, BitTorrent Foundation Ltd., and Rainberry Inc. (formerly BitTorrent Inc.) – for the unregistered offer and sale of crypto asset securities Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT).

Sun and his companies were further charged with fraudulently manipulating the secondary market for TRX through extensive wash trading, described by the SEC as “simultaneous or near-simultaneous purchase and sale of a security to make it appear actively traded without an actual change in beneficial ownership.”

Alleged Crypto-Shill Celebrities

The SEC also charged eight celebrities for promoting TRX and/or BTT without disclosing they were being paid to do so.

Actress Lindsay Lohan, YouTuber/Boxer Jake Paul, DeAndre Cortez Way (Soulja Boy), and singer/songwriter Austin Mahone, are joined by porn actress Michele Mason (aka Kendra Lust), Miles Parks McCollum (Lil Yachty), Shaffer Smith (Ne-Yo) and Aliaune Thiam (Akon) on the SEC’s list.

The SEC’s complaint alleges that Sun and his companies sold TRX and BTT as investments via unregistered “bounty programs” that saw partners promote the tokens on social media while recruiting others to join Tron-affiliated Telegram and Discord channels.

Sun, BitTorrent Foundation, and Rainberry reportedly sold BTT in unregistered monthly airdrops to investors who purchased and held TRX in Tron wallets or on other crypto trading platforms. The SEC says that every offer and sale violated Section 5 of the Securities Act .

Fraud and Market Manipulation

The SEC alleges that Sun was also the architect of a scheme that sought to artificially inflate the volume of TRX on the secondary market.

During a 10-month period 2018/2019, Sun allegedly directed his employees “to engage in more than 600,000 wash trades of TRX between two crypto asset trading platform accounts [Sun] controlled, with between 4.5 million and 7.4 million TRX wash traded daily.”

Sun is said to have supplied a significant amount of TRX to facilitate the scheme while also selling TRX into the secondary market himself. These “illegal, unregistered offers and sales” reportedly generated $31 million.

Sun’s Stunts Slammed by SEC

“While we’re neutral about the technologies at issue, we’re anything but neutral when it comes to investor protection,” said Gurbir S. Grewal, Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement.

“As alleged in the complaint, Sun and others used an age-old playbook to mislead and harm investors by first offering securities without complying with registration and disclosure requirements and then manipulating the market for those very securities.

“At the same time, Sun paid celebrities with millions of social media followers to tout the unregistered offerings, while specifically directing that they not disclose their compensation.”

According to the SEC , six of those celebrities have already paid their way out. Lohan, Paul, Lust, McCollum, Smith, and Thiam agreed to hand over a combined $400,000 in settlements for their alleged roles in a magic bean business we called out almost four years ago .

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In common with most broadly comparable countries, internet users in Denmark enjoy movies and TV shows, music, videogames, and ebooks.

The problem for rightsholders is that a subset of the population prefers not to pay for the privilege.

Local anti-piracy group Rights Alliance (Rettigheds Alliancen) mitigates all types of piracy but for the past few years, has maintained a keen focus on torrent sites.

Working in partnership with the Danish government’s SØIK IP-Task Force, Rights Alliance forced several sites to close down and successfully prosecuted site operators , staff members, and users who uploaded content to those sites.

In 2021, Rights Alliance targeted specialized servers that not only supply content to torrent sites but also play a role in boosting download times while improving security.

Seedbox Providers Appear in the Crosshairs

In basic terms, every BitTorrent user already operates a potential ‘seedbox’. A computer (box) loaded with a correctly-configured torrent client and content to upload can ‘seed’ or share content with others. However, the term ‘seedbox’ usually refers to a pre-configured remote server running a torrent client.

Accessed via a web interface in the user’s browser, these remote torrent clients have several advantages, including 24/7/365 uptime, high-speed connections, and depending on the provider and many other factors, varying levels of protection against rightsholders’ lawsuits.

In 2021, news broke that six people had been arrested in Denmark due to their alleged connections to several local torrent sites. Among them was Kasper Nielsen of internet services company HNielsen Networks, a supplier of servers under various brands that could be configured for ‘seedbox’ purposes.

Available information indicated that the servers had been used by an unknown number of users to share content on private torrent sites ShareUniversity, Superbits and DanishBytes.

Prosecution

Targeting the operator of a service provider, offering access to fundamentally legal servers and software, isn’t the same as targeting a user of those services who act as direct infringers. In order to hold a third party liable for someone else’s infringement, rightsholders usually need to show negligence or demonstrate that the provider or similar third party is somehow complicit.

In Denmark, the bar has been set fairly low. In 2015, a man was arrested for running a site that carried no pirate software but did advise users how to use piracy app Popcorn Time. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court , and the man ultimately received a six-month conditional sentence for contributory infringement.

When Rights Alliance filed its criminal complaint against HNielsen Networks, the anti-piracy group referenced the landmark Filmspeler case which involved the sale of piracy-configured media players.

Seedbox Seller Sentenced

According to statements published by Rights Alliance and NSK (Særlig Kriminalitet) Denmark’s Special Crime Unit, Nielsen was convicted yesterday for selling seedboxes in the knowledge they were being used by others to share movies, TV shows, eBooks and other content, without permission from rightsholders.

“On February 28, the Court in Aalborg ruled against the Danish owner behind a seedbox company for, in the period November 2020 to May 2021, having sold seedboxes and server capacity to an unknown number of people, knowing that they were used for illegal sharing of no less than 3,838 copyright-protected works on the Danish and Nordic file sharing services ShareUniversity, Superbits and DanishBytes,” Rights Alliance reports.

Nielsen was handed a three-month conditional (suspended) sentence and a confiscation order for DKK 300,000 (around $42,600), the amount users had paid his company to access the seedbox servers. The 35-year-old must also pay compensation of DKK 298,660 to Rights Alliance.

“Providers of seedboxes have a responsibility to ensure that their services are not used for illegal uploading and downloading of copyrighted content, which the Rights Alliance can clearly see that they are doing,” says Maria Fredenslund, Director of Rights Alliance.

“Therefore, this case helps to send a signal to other providers that you cannot deliberately sell services to the illegal market.”

Defendant Did Not Contest The Case

Since court documents are yet to be published and Rights Alliance was unable to share copies with TorrentFreak, we asked Nielsen if he could provide more background detail on the case. An important detail is that Neilsen was advised by his lawyers to take a plea deal, and did so at any early stage.

This came to light when we requested details relating to the Rights Alliance claim that “no less than 3,838 copyright-protected works” were shared on the torrent sites. Since 3,838 is pretty specific number, how was that proven?

The simple answer is that when Nielsen took the plea deal, there was no need to prove anything in court. The 3,838 figure and any evidence related to ‘knowledge’ of infringement carried out by seedbox customers on the sites, were accepted as true.

In respect of the 3,838 titles shared on the sites, there was apparently no indication of how many clients were sharing that content, so one user per title was assumed. No data is available to confirm or deny that claim but Neilsen says that the decision yesterday renders that moot, and he’s pleased the case is all over.

“I am quite happy that the case is over and that I can now focus on the future for myself and my company. The sentence is what we aimed for. The financial side is naturally tedious but we’ll overcome that,” he says.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Private torrent sites, or private trackers as they’re commonly known, are designed to be difficult to access.

In many cases, prospective members will need an invitation from someone who is already a member, although some sites will open their front doors when people open their wallets. This presents a challenge for people who want to give them valuable, urgent information but must pay to do so.

Background and Dilemma

Just a few hours ago, TorrentFreak received a rather detailed tip from a security researcher who prefers to remain anonymous. The information relates to three major/well-known private trackers and their users directly, but from the evidence presented, the security debacle exposes other sites too.

The researcher came to us with the story because, after trying to get the attention of the sites’ operators, even through other sites that might forward the message, nothing has been done. Surprising, given the scale of the problem.

The researcher’s goal is to protect the sites’ users but if we publicly name the sites here, that will not buy enough time for the admins to hear about the news and plug the gaps. Instead, we’ll provide enough information for the sites’ operators to recognize their own site from the inside and then one minute later, the problem should be fixed.

The Security Issue

To get their hands on the latest releases as quickly as possible, trackers often rely on outside sources that have access to so-called 0-Day content, i.e, content released today. The three affected sites seem to have little difficulty obtaining some of their content within minutes. At least in part, that’s achieved via automation.

When outside suppliers of content are other torrent sites, a piece of software called Torrent Auto Uploader steps in. It can automatically download torrents, descriptions, and associated NFO files from one site and upload them to another, complete with a new .torrent file containing the tracker’s announce URL.

The management page above has been heavily redacted because the content has the potential to identify at least one of the sites. It’s a web interface, one that has no password protection and is readily accessible by anyone with a web browser. The same problem affects at least three different servers operated by the three sites in question.

Web Interface For Torrent Clients

Torrent Auto Uploader relies on torrent clients to transfer content. The three sites in question all use rTorrent clients with a ruTorrent Web UI. We know this because the researcher sent over a whole bunch of screenshots and supporting information which confirms access to the torrent clients as well as the Torrent Auto Uploader software.

The image above shows redactions on the tracker tab for good reason. In a regular setup, torrent users can see the names of the trackers coordinating their downloads. This setup is no different except that these URLs reference three different trackers supplying the content to one of the three compromised sites.

Can it Get Any Worse?

Rather than publish a sequence of completely redacted screenshots, we’ll try to explain what they contain. One begins with a GET request to another tracker, which responds with a torrent file. It’s then uploaded to the requesting site which updates its SQL database accordingly.

From there the script starts checking for any new entries on a specific RSS feed which is hidden away on another site that has nothing to do with torrents. The feed is protected with a passkey but that’s only useful when nobody knows what it is.

The same security hole also grants direct access to one of the sites tracker ‘bots’ through the panel that controls it.

Then there’s access to ‘Staff Tools’ on the same page which connect to other pages allowing username changes, uploader application reviews, and a list of misbehaving users that need to be monitored. That’s on top of user profiles, the number of torrents they have active, and everything else one could imagine.

Another screenshot featuring a torrent related to a 2022 movie reveals the URL of yet another third-party supplier tracker. Some basic queries on that URL lead to even more torrent sites. And from there, more, and more, and more – revealing torrent passkeys for every single one on the way.

Security holes need to be fixed sooner rather than later but getting hold of operators in this niche is difficult by design. Users of all sites might want to make a bit of noise in the hope that the three that matter actually do something.

Update: Two shut down, one to go

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

More than a decade ago, TorrentFreak reported on YouHaveDownloaded.com, a new service dedicated to BitTorrent tracking.

Knowing that most BitTorrent-based sharing is conducted in public, the site’s operators harvested torrents and captured the IP addresses connected to them.

When we discovered the project, YouHaveDownloaded had 103,200 torrents in its database and IP address data on 51.2 million users. That platform eventually shut down but a similarly named site, IKnowWhatYouDownload , later emerged with similar functionality.

The tracking service has been entertaining and sometimes scaring BitTorrent users for years, matching IP addresses to infringing downloads and even providing lists of IP addresses relating to specific content. It can show the countries where a torrent proved most popular this month or reveal content becoming popular everywhere today.

Users with dynamic IP addresses researching themselves may be presented with false alarms, but as a broad research tool operating in an underserved niche, the service works as advertised.

Anyone who has spent any longer than five minutes on the site – pirates especially – will understand what the site is for. It’s a service that harvests and then publishes data related to the BitTorrent ecosystem (specifically DHT) so if that’s your thing, you won’t be disappointed.

Those seeking pirate downloads will find absolutely nothing of interest. No torrents. No downloads. Not even a magnet link. Anti-piracy groups and leading entertainment companies arrived at a different conclusion five years ago and still haven’t changed their minds.

Anti-Piracy Experts Unite in Disagreement

After we first reported on IKnowWhatYouDownload in December 2016, anti-piracy companies started reporting the site to Google, claiming it infringed their clients’ rights.

DMCA notices spiked in February 2017 and a handful of months later began to level off. In late 2019, complaints to Google started to rise again and in January 2021, they suddenly took off once more.

At the time of writing, more than 9,472 individual complaints targeting in excess of 18,800 URLs have been submitted to Google, alleging copyright violations that simply did not happen.

Making matters worse, close to 50% of all complaints filed with Google contain URLs that weren’t even present in Google’s indexes when the takedown notices were sent. The search engine usually indexes all pages quickly but in this case the URLs couldn’t be indexed because they never existed in the first place.

The anti-piracy companies may have attempted to predict where infringing links would appear in the future, fabricated the URLs, and sent them to Google in advance, hoping that Google would bin them before they appeared in search results. That can work against pirate sites , but this is not a pirate site – it’s a database of piracy activity.

Other things make the continuous targeting of IKnowWhatYouDownload even more baffling.

Demo Project to Showcase Data Availability

While the service is a fully functioning BitTorrent data portal in its own right, it’s actually a live demo of what can be achieved using data collected by tech outfit PeerTrace . Due to the way data is collected, it is not suitable for prosecuting BitTorrent users but if copyright holders want to access the available data, they can.

PeerTrace data is also available to law enforcement agencies and, as we already know, is useful for people generally interested in how content is spread using BitTorrent, by whom, and where.

It’s the type of data that could prove useful to anti-piracy and entertainment companies but beyond that, it also drives legitimate consumption. Every page on the site referencing data for a specific movie carries links to legal streaming portal Kinopoisk .

Checking For Actual Infringement?

As things stand, there’s no sign that the copyright complaints will end anytime soon. French anti-piracy group ALPA, anime company Toei, Disney, Sky, Canal+, Columbia, Irdeto, Fox, Lionsgate, Sony, and Netflix have all filed infringement complaints – and that’s just a tiny sample of the 42-page list of rightsholders published by Google.

IKnowWhatYouDownload owner Andrey Rogov believes that the companies scan for filenames matching their content and consider that’s good enough to file a complaint.

“I think that a lot of companies (copyright holders) implement automatic systems that search pages with torrents with their content (movie, series and other),” Rogov says.

“Usually, they write to us with automatic email and we answer that we don’t distribute content. But probably some just write reports to Google and that’s it. We don’t like it, of course, but I think we can do nothing with it.”

One thing we considered early on is that copyright holders might not be scanning for filenames on their own but also BitTorrent hash values. In itself, publishing hashes is not an infringement of copyright but if a filename referencing pirated content appears on the same page as an ‘infringing’ hash value, it’s more likely to be a pirate site than not.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t provide a credible explanation either. Rather than displaying the hash values of potentially infringing content, the hash values shown on Rogov’s site (including in URLs) are internally generated and definitely not BitTorrent hashes.

Since Google is required to remove content following complaints, around 46% of the URLs submitted in DMCA notices so far have indeed been removed from Google. That raises the question of when IKnowWhatYouDownload’s search ranking will suffer after being incorrectly labeled a pirate site.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Comme tous les ans, le lobby des studios de cinéma aux USA alerte le gouvernement américain sur les plateformes en ligne accusées d'être des havres du piratage. [Lire la suite]

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The decision whether to pirate content or pay for it is ultimately a personal choice influenced by any number of factors.

From content availability to the ability to pay, from wanting content now or being forced to wait, the scales can easily tip one way or the other.

By emphasizing the benefits of legal consumption and elevating public perception of risk, anti-piracy groups try to tip the scales in favor of rightsholders. Showing real-life consequences of piracy is one of the available options.

Deterrence For All

Torrent sites offering Danish content were popular in Denmark for obvious reasons, at least until anti-piracy group Rights Alliance teamed up with police to shut them down .

When key DanishBits players were arrested, convicted and later sent to prison , anyone inclined to launch a new site had a crystal clear example of the potential risks. As a deterrent to regular BitTorrent users, it wasn’t the right message.

The pursuit of high-level players would’ve simply reinforced the belief that only those at the top face any risk. But Rights Alliance hadn’t forgotten regular torrent site users and was preparing to send them a hand-crafted message.

Regular BitTorrent User Sentenced

A former user of DanishBits appeared in court Thursday having pleaded guilty to sharing around 40 movies on DanishBits. As previously reported , he had no formal connections with the site other than membership, and wasn’t part of any specific uploader group. He was a normal user, much like any other.

Rights Alliance needed a conviction that would resonate with the general public so after hiring a specialist company to gather tracking evidence, a case was built against the DanishBits user. Instead of being handed to a lawfirm for civil action, the case was accepted by the police for criminal prosecution.

Yesterday the Court of Frederiksberg handed down a 30-day conditional prison sentence and ordered the man to pay DKK 2,840 (US$380) in damages, the exact amount requested by Rights Alliance on behalf of its rightsholder partners. The Court also ordered the confiscation of two computers and external hard drives.

Compared to the wild damages awards available to U.S. courts in civil cases, $380 may seem insignificant. But what it represents is a real amount attached to a very real criminal conviction, one that Rights Alliance (RA) believes can offer significant support to credible anti-piracy messaging.

RA: Conviction Marks a Turning Point

Considering the importance of the prosecution, TorrentFreak asked Rights Alliance CEO Maria Fredenslund if the conditional prison sentence would send the right kind of message. Was it too harsh, or perhaps not harsh enough?

“That was what the prosecution was going for, and we certainly think that a prison sentence has a deterrent effect,” Fredenslund says.

“Not least because the compensation claim is also taken into account, and our experience with the’ environment’ shows that it also means a lot for the preventive effect.”

Rights Alliance obviously wants knowledge of the conviction to be a dominant factor when choices are being made over whether to pirate content or pay for it. Maria Fredenslund believes that the combination of police intervention and adjudication of compensation claims in criminal cases could help tip the scales in favor of legal content.

But just as importantly, Rights Alliance CEO believes that the case represents a turning point in the fight against piracy – the involvement of the police.

“Finally, we have come to the point where the theft of films, series and other content is also a task that the police take care of. It is a necessity and therefore also a milestone in the work to ensure good conditions in the digital area,” Fredenslund concludes.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Trackers are a crucial part of the BitTorrent infrastructure, making it easier for downloaders and uploaders to connect to each other.

Technically speaking trackers are similar to a DNS provider, they function as a ‘phone book’ pointing people to content without knowing what it is.

Demonii Tracker

In 2015, Demonii was the largest torrent tracker around. The Demonoid-inspired service handled requests from more than 50 million peers , resulting in more than two billion connections per day.

This reign ended abruptly at the end of that year. When the Motion Picture Association shut down the torrent icon YIFY , Demonii went down with it . As it turned out, YIFY was also the driving force behind the popular tracker; a fact that was relatively unknown.

With YIFY in the grasp of the MPA, some people feared that Demonii had been compromised as well. There was no evidence for this claim but that was irrelevant as Demonii soon went offline. It stayed offline too, until just a few days ago.

Surprise Comeback

Out of nowhere, Demonii suddenly became responsive again this month. The comeback went largely unnoticed by most torrent users but those that keep a close eye on tracker connections could have noticed. As it turns out, many active torrents still have Demonii in the tracker list.

Immediately after its resurrection, Demononii roughly started where it left off, coordinating transfers of over four million peers. These millions of torrent users connect to nearly two million older torrents that were also active before the tracker’s shutdown.

The instant activity shows how many active torrents still have Demonii listed as a tracker. And since these torrents often have less than a handful of downloaders today, a central tracker will help to improve connectivity.

The big question is, of course, who resurrected Demonii and how did they get their hands on the domain?

Demonii Has a new Owner

After reaching out to several people, we found out that ‘Suni’, a veteran in the BitTorrent scene, is behind the comeback. Suni was once the operator of a smaller torrent site and was connected to a collective of torrent sites that was started back in 2005.

This collective, which included popular sites such as myBittorrent and Fenopy, pooled resources and knowledge to get things done. The group eventually fell apart after a few years, but many site operators remained connected.

Suni eventually shut down his site, which he prefers not to name in public, but kept a close eye on the torrent ecosystem. When YIFY was shut down in 2015, he noticed that the Demonii.com domain remained in the hands of the original owner.

Demonii was “an icon” according to Suni, who decided to reach out to YIFY in the hopes that they would agree to hand it over. After all, with more than 50 million people relying on it, the tracker served an important function.

“The tracker served a purpose. While many may argue that the loss of Demonii back in 2015 was no big deal for the ecosystem, realistically, it was; it was one of the most relied-on Torrent Trackers in the world,” Suni tells us.

Indeed, while trackerless technology such as PEX and DHT were able to take over the functions of the defunct tracker in most cases, centralized trackers can be crucial for less popular torrents to survive.

7 Years Waiting…

Unfortunately for Suni, YIFY didn’t want to hand over the domain; at least, not at the time. It would take almost seven years before that would happen.

After the early offers to take over Demonii were rejected, Suni and YIFY remained in touch. Over the years the Demonii topic was brought up on occasion, but usually without success.

“I would jokingly be like ‘hey, you should give me Demonii.com,’ and always was rejected; never told why and of course, I accepted it.

“It wasn’t until we were chatting more recently about the cost of domain pricing for each of our online presences, that YIFY randomly sent back a random string of characters; and was like ‘it’s yours, let me know when it’s transferred’,” Suni says.

This version of what happened is corroborated by another source. We also spoke to a member of the original YIFY team, who preferred not to comment. However, the end result is that Demonii is operational again, with millions of people using it.

Tech Specs

Demonii, like the original, runs on the OpenTracker software which is relatively lightweight. Suni informs us that the tracker is currently hosted on two virtual machines, running Debian 11 from docker containers.

The tracker supports both IPv4 and IPv6 connections. The former are still much more prevalent and the dual-stack server handles around 300,000 active requests per minute on a 1x 6 Core 16GB machine. However, it’s only using a fraction of its total capacity.

“Everything is as optimized as possible; realistically anything and everything that can be stripped out is stripped. At time of writing; the v4 server is using 850mb ram. and about 11% of a CPU core,” Suni says.

The above shows that Demonii is ready for more growth if needed. Suni also ordered new hardware to expand the operation even further. This is all coming out of his own pockets as the tracker itself doesn’t generate any revenue.

Legal Issues?

It is important to stress that the tracker is content-neutral. It’s simply a service that anyone can use to add to their torrent files. The tracker itself doesn’t host any torrents, nor does it have any control over how people use the tracker.

Still, rightsholders may yet demand the blacklisting of certain torrents. Like others such as OpenTrackr.org, Demonii will consider accepting these requests, although it doesn’t believe that it’s doing anything illegal.

“I am of course, more than willing and able to implement blacklisting, it’s a small price to pay really. But like others I would be putting up lists of hashed that have been blacklisted from the tracker,” Suni says.

All in all, Suni believes that Demonii is just offering a neutral service, much like ISPs or even torrent clients. And judging from the more than 400 million requests per day, it’s quite a popular service already.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

As the horrors caused by Russia’s invasion of neighbor Ukraine continue, the geopolitical and financial implications are being felt throughout the world.

Dozens of countries aligned with the defense of Ukraine have implemented unprecedented sanctions. From withering restrictions on Russia’s banking system to a simple refusal to do business, the desire is to restrict Putin’s ability to wage war.

On a public level, US and EU entertainment companies have also suspended business, meaning that Netflix, Spotify and similar services are a thing of the past. Hollywood studios Paramount, Disney, Warner Bros., and Sony announced a suspension of new movie releases, meaning that at least for the foreseeable future, blockbusters such as The Batman won’t be seen on Russia’s big screens.

Well, that was the plan at least.

Russia’s Cinema Industry Sounds Alarm Bells

In the wake of Hollywood’s unprecedented suspension of new releases, Russia’s Association of Cinema Owners issued a powerful statement. Representing 700 cinemas and 2,600 screens across the country, the group said that the collapse of the entire film industry was on the horizon.

“We express concern about the high probability of liquidation of the entire film industry in the country in the context of the introduction of large-scale and unprecedented sanctions by a number of states against the Russian Federation, including those directly related to cinemas,” the Association warned.

“Unfortunately, the quantity and quality of Russian films released to the public does not meet the full demand of cinemas for content. In addition, the release of some Russian films, for reasons unknown to us, has been postponed from the next dates or completely canceled despite the fact that these films received state support for production.”

With predictions of an 80% loss in revenue, the Association called on the Ministry of Culture to offer assistance. Whether any was given is unclear but in the meantime, some cinemas have been taking drastic action to put people in seats.

Where There’s The Will, There’s a Way

Around the middle of April, posts on social media sites popular in Russia (VK, Telegram) suggested that cinemas in several regions would begin screening big Hollywood movies, including ones that should not be available. The Batman (Warner Bros.), Don’t Look Up (Netflix) and I’m Blushing (Pixar) were just some of the titles mentioned.

Just days later, screenings in several Russian cities were in full swing. On April 21, a special event at the WIP contemporary art center in Moscow featured The Batman. Tickets cost around 500 rubles (US$7.00) with the organizers framing the screening as an art performance with artistic commentary on Hollywood’s departure from the Russian market.

The source for the movie was unofficial, of course. The pirated copy – complete with Russian dubbing – was downloaded from an unnamed torrent site. Utilizing the same or similar source, additional movie screenings took place at several other venues, including the Grinvich Cinema in Yekaterinburg.

At the time of writing, the cinema is still allowing customers to book online to watch pirated movies, including The Batman which has five performances today alone.

Who is Behind These Illegal Screenings?

Given that movie piracy is illegal in Russia (despite recent news reports stating the opposite), it’s no surprise that some cinemas are attempting to distance themselves from illegality.

In the image above, the Grinvich Cinema notes that the listing for The Batman was “compiled and posted” by the organizers of a private event. A comment from the venue’s press office stressed that “The Grinvich Cinema doesn’t show Batman” but admitted it had reached an agreement with “companies” to rent three of its screens.

While liability for the screenings would be for a court to decide, several groups in Russia are publicly driving them. Among the most prominent are ‘Kino Non-Stop’ (Cinema Non-Stop) and ‘World Movies On the Big Screen’ which advertise screenings of movies on their VK social media accounts ( 1 , 2 ).

Smaller screenings are also being arranged less formally, with cinema-goers squeezing into small rooms and being charged nothing for the privilege. But whatever the scale, industry consensus is that such screenings are illegal and represent a return to the “dark days” of Russian cinema.

Cinema Industry Condemnation

“The illegal public demonstration of pirated, or rather, stolen, copies of films in cinemas takes the Russian cinema business out of the legal arena and returns us to the dark days of the illegal business of the 1990s,” a statement from the Association of Cinema Owners reads.

“We understand that such cases are primarily caused by panic in the industry due to the lack of an effective government response to the current critical situation of Russian cinemas and the inability of the Russian film industry in the short term to offer spectacular films that are interesting to a wide audience of cinemas, despite the impressive support of the film industry at the expense of the state budget.”

Noting that there have been no changes to Russian copyright law that permit piracy, the Association says that unlicensed screenings breach both civil and criminal law.

“We condemn the practice of illegal screening of films in Russian cinemas and call on the entire professional film community to prevent such practices,” the Association concludes.

How this problem will be solved without a halt in hostilities is unclear. Reports of fans traveling to other countries to watch the latest movies at great expense are already emerging, but that is neither practical nor sustainable.

It appears that mass piracy is now firmly back on the public agenda and it seems unlikely that Western companies will be able to do much about it. Many social media posts express support for piracy, arguing that if Western movie companies hadn’t pulled out, there would be no need for illegal screenings.

While in simple terms that is broadly true, addressing why they pulled out in the first place also provides a clear roadmap for returning to some kind of normality.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.